'The Distance' takes searing look at parents who leave their children

Megan Kohl, from left, Allison Latta and Abigail Boucher star in "The Distance," written by Deborah Bruce, in a Haven Theatre production. (Austin D. Oie photo)

Watch enough nature documentaries and you'll hear no judgment from the narrators, even when the footage shows a mother animal rejecting her baby fawn or pup or chick. It happens, the calm voice will explain as a dispassionate camera observes from afar, sometimes for no discernible reason at all.

Humans have been known to abandon their young as well, unfortunately, but who can remain detached and clinical in the face of this cruel abnormality — which perhaps isn't as abnormal as we might hope? That's the narrative engine that drives British playwright Deborah Bruce's spiky drama "The Distance," now receiving a very smart, serpentine production from director Elly Green for Haven Theatre.

Having ditched her young family in Australia for reasons left unclear, 40-something Bea (Abigail Boucher) has escaped to the suburban London home of her friend Kate (Megan Kohl) to lick her wounds, or at least catch her breath. The spare, clean lines of designer Joseph Schermoly's set cleverly suggest the modernist architecture of a high-end home built from glass and steel and concrete; everything is terribly stylish and exposed and uncomfortable-seeming.

Bea and Kate are joined by their friend Alex (a vulnerable floozy played by Allison Latta), Kate's husband Darragh (Layne Manzer, as a man not as dim as he first appears) and Darragh's ne'er do well brother (Patrick Gannon, who kicks his righteous indignation into high gear when the moment demands).

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The wine and chatter flow endlessly, as do Kate's single-minded efforts to figure out how to get Bea's kids back. Except Bea doesn't want them. At all. Ever.

"He's better at it than me," she says of her soon-to-be ex's parenting skills. She feels trapped by her marriage and repelled by the demands (and perhaps also the joys) of parenthood, and yet we never get a real sense why she is so eager to wash her hands of two little people she has brought into the world. Boucher's performance is enigmatic to the point that you wish the script had given her a bit more to play with here; the character withdraws entirely into herself rather than engage in debating the logic of her choices. We never really hear her arguments, which deserve an airing no matter how socially unacceptable.

Ditching one's kids is nasty business whether or not there's malicious intent (a detail that rarely matters to those left behind), and playwright Bruce holds everyone's feet to the fire. Alex has children from three different men, one of whom is completely unreachable. And Darragh has a daughter from a one-night stand whom he has never acknowledged. This is a story full of ambiguities — are children better off without a parent who is entirely uninterested in raising them? — told from the point of view of the neglecters themselves.

It's a smart play about an ugly reality, delivered like a shot and flecked with sharp, comedic dialogue and witty asides, including an attempt to get a corkscrew to work only to realize the wine bottle is a screw-top.

Kohl in particular finds a way to give Kate's amiably bossy (sometimes insufferable) personality a human dimension. She is a control freak who can't lay off, which gives the following exchange some of its tang: When asked about dinner plans that night, she explains that her husband is in charge. "How'd that happen?" comes the surprised reaction, to which Kate replies: "Just supper. I'm still in charge of everything else." It's a joke, but also very much not a joke, and both Kohl and director Green nail the rhythm of it, just so.